This is from CBS Market Watch via GATA Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Here's another delightful surprise: Thom Calandra, columnist for CBSMarketWatch.com, dispatched this ode to gold today. Mainstream press support for gold -- amazing.

Please post this as seems useful.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

GOLD IS POISED FOR GREATNESS

By Thom Calandra www.CBSMarketWatch.com February 15, 2000

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- I'm collecting people.

People who believe in gold. Companies too.

Right now, there are 17 people in the world who believe in the once-precious metal. Last week there were 12.

If you are one of the same 17 people who believed -- 20 months ago -- that oil prices would surpass $30 a barrel, then you have to believe in gold.

Jay Taylor believes in gold. He's the president of Placer Dome (PDG), a large gold-mining company in Canada. Placer Dome is stopping its forward sale of gold.

Forward sales of gold are crushing the metal. That's when a gold mining company freaks out about the falling price of the metal. So it borrows gold, then sells the stuff to lock in a good price.

The net selling of borrowed gold around the world -- by the metal's producers -- is a joke. What if the oil ministers at OPEC never got their act together and kept jamming all that crude down the pipelines of the world's economies? Do you think oil would be staging a sustained rally? See our futures contracts page.

Placer Dome just came out and said it won't hedge gold any more. It's about time. Net selling of borrowed gold, which trades for about $308 an ounce, boosts the world's total supply by about 10 percent. Add in central banks selling gold -- the banks have about 20,000 tons of the metal in their vaults -- and voila: gold is a stick-in-the-mud.

Gold has been a stick-in-the-mud for more than a decade. That's all about to change.

Up to this point, net selling of gold has been how gold companies got extra money -- by lending their gold and collecting an interest rate payment. It's not enough that demand for gold jewelry, especially from places like India and China, is exceeding production. The big gold-mining companies have had to play hedging games and leasing games to keep their shareholders happy.

That's like a computer chip company flooding the market for semiconductors. And then leasing the chips to boot! If I owned Intel, and its financial officers were engaging in that kind of activity, I'd bail.

Placer Dome is a believer. It will stop selling forward about 2 million ounces of gold. Others, like Barrick Gold (ABX), are also starting to come around. The halting of hedging will do more to boost shareholders' net worth than derivative games in the futures markets.

That's because in a day, or a week, or a month, or a year, something will spark the price of gold. It may be political turmoil in Germany. Or social strife in Austria. Perhaps the collapse of the global currency system as we know it. Maybe even $40-a-barrel oil. See Futures Movers.

The spark may even be an inflation shock later this week when Washington releases its consumer and producer prices. See our economic preview.

But believe me. It will happen. And when it does, gold mining stocks could leave Internet stocks in the dust.

I believe that. I really do.

-END-

-- Zdude (zdude777@hotmail.com), February 16, 2000

Answers

Oil at $40 a bbl!

Who knows where gold will end up?

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), February 16, 2000.

Crude at 30.10, up 0.04

Gold at 302.7, down 1.4.

Platinum, palladium and silver still rising though (platinum at 533, +5.1 == +0.97%). Perhaps you're in the wrong metal. ;)

-- _ (_@_._), February 16, 2000.

Hey, Zdude, this is about 5 or 6 posts you've made where you forget to turn the link off. Who the hell wants to read that stuff in underlined blue?

One......a type. Two.....you forgot. 5 or 6... you're not learning from your mistakes. If you're going to hotlink, please learn to do it properly.

-- ($@5.6), February 16, 2000.

@

If its underlined in blue it is a hyperlink, and its turned on so that if you so choose you can click on it to go to the source where the article originated. But of course you already knew that before you decided to gripe about it.

I'm sure your one of those people who think that the "only way to go" is to cut and paste a link into your browser and I half agree with you, but believe it or not a lot of people dont know how to do that and I was one of them until just recently.

Frankly I dont see what the big deal is maybe you could explain it to me?

As far as my trillion dollar thread above, Yes I admit, I screwed up and didnt close the link and I'm sorry if that troubled you.

On your gold comment I've got a News Flash for you, believe it or not Gold is up 20% since last summer and is poised to go much higher in the future! Check out the Dow today its down 156 points, " Perhaps everyones in the wrong Stocks"

And lastly maybe you'd like to show me where I said I was in Gold? Heck maybe I'm in all the metals ever think about that? Or maybe I'm in none of them, but one things for sure and that is.......You'll never know!

Lighten Up!

-- Zdude (zdude777@hotmail.com), February 17, 2000.

Sysop Test. (Thread works poster)

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), February 17, 2000.